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“Poetry, Immigration and the FBI: The Transborder Immigrant Tool,” Interview with b.a.n.g. lab’s Ricardo Dominguez, Hyperallergic, June 2012


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From Leila’s introduction to the Transborder Immigrant Tool in her interview with Ricardo: “Almost five years ago, Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab released the first iteration of the Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT), a mobile-phone technology that provides poetry to immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border while leading them to water caches in the Southern California desert. In 2010, the project caused a firestorm of controversy on the American political scene, and the artists of EDT/b.a.n.g. lab were investigated by three Republican Congressmen, the FBI Office of Cybercrimes and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where Ricardo Dominguez, co-founder of EDT (with Brett Stalbaum) and principal investigator of b.a.n.g. lab, is an associate professor in the visual arts department… In this interview, locative media becomes dislocative, Homeland Security drones appear as feral animals, global positioning systems transform into global poetic systems, a Fox News host becomes an unwitting advocate of the power of poetry and typographical empty brackets [ ] become a way to represent the infinities, the overflow, that cannot be contained by state control and repression.”

Read the interview